Extract

Along the Lycian Way

by
Andrew Finkel

After years of walking through some of the most important countryside along the Turkish Mediterranean, a lone English woman has documented a networkof ancient roads and mountain paths that once linked the cities of ancient Lycia.

Kate Clow abandoned her life as a London computer consultant, and is now helping to foment a rural revolution in Turkey, indirectly challenging the army, the government and even the bank that awarded her top prize in a prestigious environmental contest.

Clow has painstakingly mapped a 250km route from Fethiye, the ancient Telmessos, to the city of Antalya, where she herself now lives. It follows the ancient, cobbled roads, goat trails and paths that are used by nomadic herdsmen. It also covers more than a millennium of human history, passing graves dating from 700BC and unexcavated Byzantine monasteries from 800AD. To walk the whole route at a single stretch takes just under six weeks.

A glorious thistle, the globe artichoke merits better than the usual simple boiling, especially if it is the giant Turkish globe, with its huge mouth-watering centre. Berrin Torolsan reveals how to do it justice

Out of sight of the sea, high above Göcek Marina at Huzur Yadisi, another green peace prevails. In a hidden valley, Richard Tredennick-Titchen found an encampment of yurts that dramatically changed his life.

One of Turkey’s finest birds is the grouse-like Caspian snowcock. To find it takes some organising, for it lives way above the summer pastures in remote areas such as the Aladaglar, the highest part of the Taurus Mountains.